Question

Late flights An airline reports that 85% of its flights arrive on time. To find the

probability that a random sample of 4 of this airline’s flights into LaGuardia Airport in New York City on the same night all arrive on time, can we multiply (0.85)(0.85)(0.85)(0.85)? Why or why not?

Short answer

No, because the provided events cannot be considered independent events

Step-by-step solution

Given information

$P$(Flight arrives on time)$=85\%=0.85$
$P$(All flights are on time)$=0.5220$

Explanation

The probability of flights arriving on time is not independent, which means that if one flight is delayed, another flight may also be delayed as a result of the first flight's delay. Because the events are not self-contained. As a result, the results are incorrect because they were calculated using the multiplication rule, which is only used in the case of independent events.